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I had to make 5 different cakes/dessert last saturday. The above picture is another pandan swiss roll cake with cheese and cherry. Although there was a little incident with the oven when baking these cakes, everything turned out to be ok.

I had to make a cake for a friend's farewell party. By the time I have time to start doing it, I was already exhausted and very tired from the other cakes I made in the morning. So I had to think what cake is fast, easy, and taste good. This cake was a result of the swiss roll cakes. I had a leftover pandan sponge cake and vanilla sponge cake batter that I baked in a 8-in pan. Stacked them together and fill them with vanilla buttercream and cheese (again). Sponge cake, buttercream, and cheese, is always the favorite among my Indonesian friends. you can't go wrong with this combination.

I know the look is deceiving. From the outside, it looks like a chocolate cake or something. I wanted to make something more elegant, but I really didn't have time for it. So, I made use of what I have, my new marble pastry board, acetate sheet, metal scrapper, and my 10lbs belgian dark chocolate that seems to never decrease in quantity.

I used a plastic container that I got from a grocery store nearby, but it made it looks like a Safeway kind of cake :(.

Other than these cakes, I also made a vanilla swiss roll cake (again, with cheese and cherry) and cream puffs for a small celebration on Sunday. It turned out that I added a little too much rum (which is good for me to take off all of the stress I had :( ), but I totally forgot that there will be kids on that party. Since I used the never ending 10lbs belgian dark chocolate for the topping, people might think that the bitterness came from the too much rum instead of the bitter choc. Lesson learned. Study your audience first and don't take the stress onto the cake.

Finally, the long-awaited book is here. I've been wanting this since forever. After one day, this has become my favorite among many books in my bookshelf.

There are a few drawback to this book though. First, you have to scale down the recipe to make the standard amount/size for home-based baking. The recipe doesn't tell you what size of pan you should use and how many cakes it would make, so you don't really know what to scale it to for just one standard size cake. Second, these recipes were written for French pastry chef. A lot of the ingredients in the recipes are not available in the US. I flipped through the pages and there are only less than twenty recipes that I can actually make and although those ingredients are available in the US, they're not easy to get.

But, we'll see how it goes. I won't know for sure until I tried out one of the recipes and see the result. Stay tuned.

I made these two individual cake this morning since I had leftover vanilla sponge cake in the freezer, a little buttercream, and a small chunk of Kraft processed cheese. I made two kinds of mini cakes. The first one is two layers of sponge cake with two layers of shredded cheese, topped with cherry. I made the second one using chocolate sprinkles for the bottom filling. Both of them turned out very good!

I had a leftover rum-brandy pastry cream, coffee buttercream, and a little espreasso-rum soaking syrup from the previous giant cake. So, I used it to make mini version of it, since I also remember that I had mini chocolate sponge cake that I kept in the freezer. I know the fondant flower decoration doesn't really go with the chocolate/coffee theme, but hey it's the taste that counts right?

This consists of two different cakes, which combined into one big giant cake.

Half of this cake (I don't remember which side it is) is a three layers of dark chocolate sponge cake, moistened with strong espresso-rum simple syrup, and filled with a layer of creamy vla/pastry cream, which flavored with both rum and brandy for the bottom filling, and baileys-kahlua coffee buttercream for the top filling. This is the "adult" side of the cake.

The other half is also a three layers of dark chocolate sponge cake, moistened with raspberry simple syrup, and filled with whipped dark chocolate ganache for the first layer of filling and raspberry buttercream for the second filling. This is the "kids" side of the cake.

This is a Swedish Princess Cake. Didn't have time to take a picture before cut :(. Traditionally, it is covered in a light green marzipan. I used pink instead since I was out of green food coloring :).

It is a two layers of vanilla sponge cake, moistened with raspberry liqueur simple syrup, and filled with a thin layer of raspberry jam, a layer of vanilla bean pastry cream, and fresh cream, shaped like a dome and then covered with marzipan.

This dessert was influenced from Dutch when they invaded Indonesia a long time ago. It is made out of young coconut meat, eggs, milk, sugar, custard powder, a little flour, and flavored with vanilla and cinnamon. The whole thing is covered with meringue and sprinkled with toasted slivered almonds and rum soaked raisin.

There are two versions of this dessert. The first one is the creamy version, with the texture more like a custard. The second one is the dense one, which is more like a bread pudding. It uses slices of bread to absorb all the moisture. This one falls under the first category.

I made this chocolate cake for my friend, who is a chocoholic. Me, being not a great fan of chocolate, although not a hater either, was trying to persuade her to change her cake selection. But what can I say, she's one stubborn person :). I always prefer fruity flavor rather than chocolate flavor if I have options.

So there I was thinking about the layer combination to make a great chocolate cake, that I would actually eat myself.This cake consists of two layers of moist chocolate sponge cake brushed with raspberry simple syrup (always try to sneak something non-chocolate :P) with a single layer of crispy cocoa meringue in the middle.The fillings are light and creamy dark chocolate mousse and coffee mousse (since I think chocolate and coffee is a perfect marriage), garnished with white and dark chocolate truffles and cocoa powder on top.

She loves the cake very much that she kept the leftover for herself in the freezer. She would ate just a couple of tablespoon per day so that she can enjoy the cake longer, hahahaha.....

Anyways, I don't remember the recipe that I used, since there isn't such things. I took the recipe for chocolate mousse from here, coffee mousse from there, my own frosting, etc. I didn't really like the recipe for the coffee mousse, it was way too strong and bitter (although I'm a perfectly coffee lover). So, I would just remember the components and creating my own recipe next time.

I made this barbie cake for my niece's 2nd birthday. I've never made a barbie cake before and I thought this is the perfect time to try on one. I was planning to spend my whole saturday to make this cake (the party is in on Saturday evening), but something always come up. I got a call from the office, asking me if I can go to work that day. I have to say yes, since there was a problem with the current big project and they need me to come to help them. I thought it would take maximum 4 hours, but it turned out that I stayed for 8 hours!!!. The party was at 7 o'clock and I got home at 6 something. Luckily, I baked one batch of vanilla sponge cake and a small pandan sponge cake in the morning. I was planning to bake another batch of sponge cake but I had no time. So, I just went with what I had. I made the buttercream, carved here and there, decorate, and tralaaa....

I started to decorate this cake when the guest came. So, they watched me doing it and it made me nervous. As you can see in the picture, it's not perfectly smooth and everything, but I'm somewhat satisfied with it. Not to mention that the cake tasted great!!. It was brought to the Sunday School the day after and everybody loved it!. It was gone in a count of seconds and the kids just couldn't stop starring at the cake.

The cake was made out of vanilla and pandan sponge cake, alternating, vanilla buttercream and shredded cheese. For the pink buttercream, I used a little of red food colorings and grenadine for flavor and color too.

This style of cheesecake is completely different from the usual New York Cheesecake that we've always known. NY cheesecake would use 3-5 blocks of cream cheese, egg yolks, sugar, and sometimes a little flour and sour cream. This Japanese style cheesecake only use 1 block of cream cheese. NY cheesecake is very creamy, dense, and heavy, while JCC is very soft, some would say cottony.

Some people would probably like the classic NY Cheesecake better than the Japanese one, since the term "cheesecake" is identical to a creamy and dense type of desserts. But I really like this kind a lot better thatn the class NY cheesecake. Don't get me wrong though, I like NY cheesecake, it's just that I always love something that's light and soft in texture (mousses, light cake). It's not filling and most of the time, it would make you less "guilty" of eating it :P.

I made some modifications to the original recipe since most people say I'm very picky, but here's the original one:

Ispahan was first created by a world famous French pastry chef Pierre Herme. He was the one who first put the three ingredients, raspberry, lychee, and rose together in a macaron. It wasn't famous the first time he created it but now, it is one of his most best selling pastry.

I tried to recreate the masterpiece in the form of a cake. The cake consists of two layers of vanilla sponge cake, moistened with raspberry and lychee simple syrup , and filled with subtle yet fragrant rose mousse. Fresh raspberries and lychees are also added in the middle of the mousse.

This is a two layers of moist coffee and chocolate cake, moistened with espresso simple syrup and filled with dark chocolate mousse and French coffee buttercream.This cake is garnished with crispy caramel cracklings and crunchy toffee bits.

This Caramel Noix is made out of a single layer of chocolate sponge cake as a base and topped with very light and creamy caramel mousse with vanilla creme brulee filling in the middle of the mousse and then covered with a shiny mirror glaze on top.